


thicker than water

by villanelle



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 09:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2616854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villanelle/pseuds/villanelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren has never faced any competition when it comes to Mikasa.<br/>Except now, maybe he does.</p><p>A drabble on family, blood, and the ties in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thicker than water

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Spoilers for the most recent SNK chapters
> 
> Author’s Note: On one hand, I think Eren would want Mikasa and Levi to have a less combative relationship. But that also got me thinking about the reverse. What if he was less than thrilled while feeling a little closer to being displaced?

 

 

 

He has never needed to compete with anyone for her.

Eren could probably count on one hand the limited number of elements in his life that were constant and stable. The future was a vast chasm of uncertainty, on most days as treacherous as a Titan's gaping maw. The next colossus attack could breach Wall Rose again any day, strangling humanity into an even smaller cage to war amongst themselves. Even within the ranks of the Scouting Legion, there were faces that shifted between friend and foe, leaving the ones that were left unsure of whom they could entirely trust. 

In a way, Eren has become almost accustomed to a constantly crumbling world, his heart strung out on tenterhooks as it prepares for the next upheaval.

Simultaneously, he has come to expect that some foundations will always stand strong.

Mikasa has been unwavering since that first fateful meeting, her presence a familiar lighthouse to the turbulent stormy waters of his mind.  _Family_ , she’d called him in front of others, and he had rejected that categorization, thinking angrily about the nerve of her. Bitter and resentful because she wasn’t Mama or Papa. She wasn’t even his real sister.

And yet, over the years, Eren had sometimes looked at the two friends by his side, wondering if his interpretation of family was too rigid after all. Wondering whether his thoughts, consumingly focused on those who were gone, made him take for granted the kindred that remained.

Now however, he fears that his first instinct was right.

Eren remembers dazedly, Rod Reiss standing before him one moment and then absconding the next. Footsteps, quick and urgent, approaching him. For the first time in days, the faces that met his exhausted gaze were ones that he wanted to see. Armin’s eyes, blue as the sky on a cloudless morning, and Mikasa’s grey orbs, glimmering with relief and something he couldn’t as easily name, her lashes struggling to not let any moisture drop.

 _Safe_ , his mind registers, and his unchained body succumbs to sleep.

Almost a full day later, he awakens, immediately alarmed that the room is unfamiliar. Two warm hands encircle one of his, and it’s Mikasa seated by the bed, her knees touching the edge, her fingers soothing him into a less tremulous state. Another familiar face, though one bearing a much more grim expression, appears over the slope of her shoulder.

“Captain Levi brought us to this safe house,” Mikasa explains, glancing briefly at the man. “After Rod Reiss fled with those who are working for him. We decided that it was too dangerous to go after him right now so we’re waiting ‘til Commander Erwin arrives, to find out what’s been happening in the capital.”

Levi peers down at him, the shadows of the dimly lit room accentuating the half-moons under his eyes, making the Captain look almost the full extent of his age for once. “How are you feeling, Eren?”

“Um…fine, well I mean I feel better now, sir. But my head still feels like it’s swollen, and….I think they did something to my back.” His voice comes out raspy and dry, prompting Mikasa to insistently pass him a glass of water.

“Alright, I’ll tell Hange that you’re conscious enough for a checkover. Erwin will probably have a lot of questions for you when he gets here so rest up, Jaeger.”

With that, Levi turns on his heel to leave, but then the Captain pauses mid-step. It’s strange because Eren’s never really seen Levi acting in any manner close to tentative, but the man cautiously touches Mikasa’s shoulder and leans down to whisper something. A furrow crinkles her brow, and she murmurs back, “I’ll come find you when I go downstairs.”

The Captain leaves the room, and Eren stares pointedly at the girl who remains.

“What was that?”

Refilling the glass of water, she replies half-distractedly. “Hmm? What do you mean?”

Eren sits up on the bed, suddenly feeling very much alert, even though his back is still killing him as if there are burning sensations simmering underneath the epidermis, but he wants to know what the hell just happened.

“When I last saw you, you would’ve tried to rip off the Captain’s hand if he so much as went near two feet of you. So what — what was that? What changed?”

She quirks a dark eyebrow at him, and he realizes that her left hand is still on his as one of her fingers begins stroking gently again.

“A lot of things have changed, Eren.”

He opens his mouth to demand a better clarification than that, but then squad leader Hange steps through the door, and Mikasa relinquishes her seat with a soft reassurance that she’d soon be back.

She does come back of course, later that night. Mikasa has never broken her word to him, but Eren notes that it is a surprisingly long wait.

 

* * *

 

It takes him another day to wholly recover, but Eren finds himself steady enough to walk around the house in which they’re hiding out, still awaiting their Commander’s next instruction.

There’s not much to do around the old abandoned dwelling. Eren has already scribbled down everything he remembers from his encounter with Rod Reiss, dictating his recollections to Hange and Levi as well to ensure that the details stay fresh. His mind is a tempest, half-longing to forget what the Reiss patriarch revealed to him, and his fevered green eyes search the faces around him, desperately observant for any sign of diversion. 

The other Scouts are just relieved to have a relatively safe roof over their heads again. Each one of them, Eren notices with guilt, looks like they’ve gone through hell recently, fighting back against targeted persecution and fighting their way to rescue him.

The military lifestyle has been ingrained into their flesh however, and within a few days, they’re operating on a makeshift routine to keep their senses sharp, their bodies honed for whatever will come next.

Levi has them sparring in the small grassy clearing outside of the house, but the moves that he demonstrates are different. Specifically, he coaches them on how to disarm assailants who wield guns.

“Pay attention,” Levi tells the younger Scouts, and there's an undertone to his voice that hinges as close to worry as they've ever heard from him. “There’s a division of the MP that isn’t as incompetent as your typical military policemen. And something tells me that we’ll be meeting some of their members quite soon.”

The Captain pairs off with each of them, his critique more harshly dispensed than ever. But he spends the most time overseeing Mikasa, and Eren realizes that the two of them are still going over this re-adjusted fighting style even while everyone else is resting.

“I thought Mikasa hated him,” he finally says to Armin.

"She did," his friend responds. "But while we were on our way, trying to get to you, the Captain and her seemed to reach a sort of understanding. Apparently, they both had a significant experience in their past that played out too similarly to just be coincidence. It could be the answer for their strength. Captain Levi says that’s why Mikasa has to be especially prepared, in case she meets the leader of the First Interior Squad who also has this tremendous ability.”

It’s a transiently satisfying answer, but then later that night, Mikasa confides in him, “Eren, can you believe it? Levi might have a connection to my family. He might….he might even be  _family_.”

Not long ago, she had disdained to even refer to their superior officer by his title, her voice coated instead with persistent irreverence in contrast to Eren's fervent admiration. It strikes him that the intonation of her voice has acquired a lighter timbre when pronouncing the Captain's name. A subtle recalibration, but the girl before him is not a river that changes course for just anybody. 

Eren can barely recall the last time he saw her this stimulated. She hadn’t particularly wanted to join the military, hadn’t set her mind on the Scouting Legion until she saw that he did, but here is something, he senses keenly, that Mikasa  _wants_.

He should be happy, he knows. How many of the Scouts could say that they had any family left in the world? It’s the melancholy of having lost his own family for certain that makes his voice sound so hollow, or so Eren convinces himself.

“Oh, that — that would be great.”

But he continues to feel confused as he watches the two of them, growing closer in interaction, Mikasa willingly receptive and opening up to someone else.

 _It doesn’t matter_ , Eren thinks, trying to ward off how unbalanced he feels.  _She called me part of her family too. It’s not just blood relation that creates family._

The recent confrontation with Rod Reiss is crisp in his mind though, and he recalls how Historia’s face had lit up, morphing with her loyalties, when her supposed father called her to his side. How the blonde-haired girl had reveled in the memories of Freida, referring to that faint shadow of a sister as the  _only_  person who ever loved her.

Taking a deep gulp of water, Eren looks around the room and finds his throat still constricted. Across the table, Mikasa is smiling at someone, a small upward curve in her cheek, and it isn’t directed at him.

 

 

 


End file.
